Betty Fagenson Lewis: My Autobiography, 1903 -- 1998
I Remember Friday
I don't remember too much about Wisoko-Litovsk. What I do remember is on Friday nights, the town crier would go throughout the village calling out, In Shul arein! In Shul arein! Benchin licht! Benchin licht! (Translation: Into the synagogue! Light candles and pray!), and everyone would tie up all the small ends that they were involved in, say the prayers over the candle lights, and dress to go to the synagogue to pray. The children didn't go along.
I remember a story --a mysticism of my mother's-- that my mother told, that when you leave the synagogue, the dead come there at midnight to pray. She told how, one night, a lost traveler seeing a light in the distance, followed it and it led him to the shul(synagogue). He was frightened to see all the dead people praying. This story aroused fear within us. There was always, on Friday nights, a time when we children sat around before my mother bencht licht -- prayed over the lit Sabbath candles-- and we would drink chai, (Russian word for tea) from a saucer. They poured the tea into a cup and we then poured it into a saucer. We'd get hard pieces of sugar. You'd bite into the sugar and sip tea. We all sat around the samovar sipping tea and munching sugar.
Every Friday was a very exciting day. Everyone in the shtetl would be preparing food for Saturday, baking cakes and challahs and preparing the chunt. (Chunt: a one-pot meal consisting of meat, potatoes, beans and stuffing that is cooked overnight on Fridays in a low -temperature oven, and eaten when the family returns from synagogue on Saturday. Among religious Jews, it is forbidden to cook on the Sabbath,which starts on Friday night). My mother would make kreplach (similar to Chinese Won Ton) and Gefilte fish and Tzimmes and flumen carrots and prunes) with potatoes, and a chunk of beef. On holidays, everyone would be busy cooking and baking - it was very festive; everyone visited everyone else.
